Do you think "gun restrictions only prevent law abidding citizens from owning guns"?

[Ad_Quid_Orator]

You hear this argument all the time in the USA that "criminals don't obey gun laws so those restrictions only prevent law abiding citizens from owning guns".

Well first of all criminals don't obey laws (you know, the whole reason that they're considered "criminals" in the first place) but the point of enacting penalties is that it discourages people from violating the law.

But to see if this claim is merited or not, lets look at the stats. I mean this argument assumes that people who commit crimes are somehow fundamentally different from the rest of the population and this whole "us versus them" mentality can help explain why the prison industrial complex can treat prisoners so inhumanely and focus on punishment versus rehabilitation; but that's another story. Either way, part of "innocent until proven guilty" is that people aren't criminals before they commit their first crime.

However, the numbers don't support this whole group think mentality. For one, 42% of the individuals convicted of murder had no prior felony charges so there was no way a background check was going to keep them from getting the gun that they shot someone with. ~54% of all guns used in homicides were made in the USA so even if a gun was bought legally, it could be stolen or the person who bought it could scratch off the serial number and resell it to a criminal at an inflated price. And finally, 77% of all guns used in mass shootings were purchased legally.

[Lliam]

Obviously.

Gun restrictions are attempts to overcome the second amendment. The goal of "gun control" is to disarm honest Americans, NOT to save lives.

Gun-related homicides hovered around 15,000 to 16,000 for years. In 2020, at the onset of the covid hysteria campaign, they began to climb. I think there were around 21,000 in 2022.

The FBI says that 80% of firearm homicides are gang related. If that's true, then there were around 4,200 non gang-related firearm homicides in 2022. There are almost 10x more deaths from accidental falls, accidental poisonings, and motor vehicles. Each account for about 40,000 annual deaths.

4,200 non-gang related homicides out of over 80,000,000 honest gun owners, 330,000,000 citizens, and 450,000,000 people in the country at any one time?

How are gun laws going to disarm gangs?

By the way, how often are the much maligned AR-15s and even AK-47s used for homicide?
Handguns 45.7%;
Rifles 2.6% (of which so-called "assault rifles) are a subset);
Shotguns 1.4%; and.
Firearms (type unknown) 23.9%.
So out of the total of 21,000 firearm homicides, all types of rifles combined account for 550 annual deaths.
Is that why it's an emergency to ban "assault weapons" (a dishonest, misleading and undefined term)? Or is it because they were the easiest to use for propaganda? To hold up a black rifle with a modern, composite, ergonomic stock and convince people that it was a military weapon that had no usefulness in civilian hands other than to commit murder?

The fact is, "assault weapon" was already a defined term. It has full-automatic capability for use by the military. "'Military-style' assault weapon", later abbreviated conveniently to "assault weapon" is a made up term with no definition, but it refers to normal, semiautomatic rifles designed for civilian use. They are NOT machine guns. Machine guns are not sold in stores and it is illegal for civilians to own them unless they have a special license.

The reason for inventing the term "military-style assault weapon" and trying to fool the public was go gain public support for banning some normal firearms in order to set a legal precedent for banning more types of guns. And again, the entire goal is to ban guns (and ammunition), NOT to save lives.

Have "gun control" laws resulted in diminished homicide rates so far?

And why do "gun control" proponents ignore the stats on defensive gun use (DGU), which range from around 100,000 on the very conservative side, to over 3.5 million on the high side, with most realistic estimates around 1.5 million? How many rapes, muggings, robberies and murders have been prevented by defensive gun use, the majority of which doesn't involve firing any shots?

[Soteris]

I think its pure nonsense. Rather than view it as gun restriction, you should view it as a gun supplier. The private market is infinitely better at producing and distributing guns than the black market would ever be so limiting criminals from the private market might not cut them off from the black market but it would mean that civilians has a much easier time to obtain a gun than criminals and thus giving them an advantage.

Then we can talk about what should disqualify people from buying a gun. Domestic abuse and animal abuse for example is both track-able and correlates with mass shootings. 66% of mass shooters have a history of domestic abuse and 42% of school shooters have a history of animal cruelty. Just two as an example.

[Screenwriter]

Gun restrictions don't discourage lawful people from owning guns. There is no need for an AK-47 style gun, except to kill other humans. So not selling such guns is no skin of 99% of people's noses. Maybe gun aficionados would be discouraged because their collections wouldn't be full.

Waiting three, five or 10 days to buy a gun after a background check is also no discouragement. If you need the gun for hunting, you apply for it before a particular season starts. The same goes if you want a hand gun for home defense.

But as you say, most killers and mass shooters bought their guns legally.

However, I think the gun-suicide rate might be altered if gun buyers were forced to buy gun safes for the home. A lot of children, teens and young adults would be alive today because they couldn't get to their parents' guns.

On top of that, there is a giant denial among family members about mentally ill relatives who have access to guns around the home. The woman who entered the grammar school who was shot to death by police, had displayed all kinds of problematic behavior and the family allowed her access to their guns! This is a fact in several cases of mass shooters.

[Slingblade1126]

If you dig into those numbers deeper, you'll understand, that the key word is "convicted". Depending on the state/county, anywhere from 75 to 85 percent of felony gun charges are plead out of court. In other words, a bleeding heart, liberal prosecutor won't charge it or will plea bargain it to a lesser charge. Hunter Biden is proof how the system works. Look up the Stat of how many shooters have had prior gun charges.

[Wallythewalrus]

Does the DOJ or FBI even have stats on "gun charges"? I would think that's a Constitutional problem if they did. Lol

[exitseven]

Yes. I went through the system to Buy firearms last year. I know the local cops so it was not too hard. Still, many people would not want to jump through the hoops. People buying them illegally don't have to deal with the paperwork.

[Ad_Quid_Orator]

Yeah, they pay people who bought it legally to do the paperwork for them.

[exitseven]

or they buy stolen guns off the streeet.

[Dargil]

No but they discourage gun ownership by law abiding citizens.

[Snakeyes7]

Of course. If you are in possession of a gun then you would no longer be a law abiding citizen.

[BuckCannon]

How long did you work in a prison?

[gorydetails]

We just need to ban democrats from owning guns.

[AmeerX]

Indeed